Politics & Government

Cuts in Unemployment Benefits Coming Soon

As a result of the budget stalemate in Washington, more than 140,000 New Yorkers will begin to see an 11 percent reduction in their unemployment insurance payouts

Beginning this week, federal benefits for unemployed New Yorkers will be cut by almost 11 percent, The New York Times reports.

As a result of the budget stalemate in Washington automatic budget cuts known as “sequestration,” mandates an $85 billion across-the-board reduction in spending on military and domestic programs. That means, soon, more than 140,000 New York State residents who received unemployment benefits will begin to see a reduction in their payouts.

And New York is one of the first states to carry out the cuts, versus other states that may delay the cuts to allow more time for job search. But for those that delay, the weekly reductions will only be greater once they do kick in.

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In New York, as in many other states, the maximum duration of unemployment benefits stretched to 99 weeks at the depths of the recession. But as the state’s unemployment rate has declined, so has the availability of benefits.

At the end of last year, New York stopped offering a sort of last-resort program known as extended benefits that lasted for up to 20 weeks. Now, the longest an unemployed New Yorker can collect benefits for is 79 weeks.

Find out what's happening in Park Slopewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Patricia Torres, 29, lost her $60,000 job selling wireless phone service in Downtown Brooklyn last June. She has since had to move out of a Manhattan apartment she shared with a roommate and back in with her grandmother and ailing grandfather.

She said she depleted her savings in the first few months of unemployment, had to default on her student loans and is without health insurance because the cost to continue coverage provided by her former employer was $800 a month. Instead, she visits a city-financed clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, she said.

She said she’s been shopping her resume, and she’s getting interviews, “But they don’t want to pay me anything. They want me to work for minimum wage, which is less than I get from unemployment,” she said.

But now, Torres is bracing for her unemployment insurance payments to begin dwindling…

“I’ve worked every single day since I was 17 years old,” Torres said. “For the first time, I need help. And they’re taking it away.”


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